When President Barack Obama speaks in Hiroshima, Japan, later this week, he will have to walk a microscopically fine line to lament the tragedy that occurred there in 1945, when the United States dropped an atomic bomb, one of two used to end World War II. Within hours of the White House announcement of the Hiroshima visit, the Beijing-based Global Times, a zealously anti-American Communist Party organ, published an editorial, asking “if Obama visits Hiroshima, will Shinzo Abe visit Nanking?”
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Obama, who is in Vietnam, is coming to Japan later this week for the annual Group of Seven summit, after which he will visit Hiroshima on Friday. A group representing American former prisoners of war under the Japanese says the White House has invited one of them to accompany President Barack Obama to Hiroshima this week. “But numerous survivors don’t think they can do without an apology at all”.
Many are still reeling from diseases associated with radiation from the atomic attacks, which themselves eviscerated the lives of at least 140,000 people in Hiroshima and 74,000 in Nagasaki.
A majority of Americans see the bombings as having been necessary to end the war and save U.S. and Japanese lives, although many historians question that view.
Critics said that by not apologising, Obama will allow Japan to stick to the narrative that paints it as a victim. It was followed by Nagasaki getting hit on August 9, six days after which Japan surrendered.
Japan’s public broadcaster NHK said that as many as seventy-four people had petitioned the White House on Monday, saying that the president should do more towards nonproliferation efforts around the globe.
Pyongyang’s record of nuclear proliferation is also a cause for concern, Obama said.
“Despite the significant achievement of the Iran nuclear deal and successes in securing and reducing nuclear weapons-grade material globally, the president’s Prague agenda has been mostly stalled since the 2010 New START agreement with Russian Federation, with no further nuclear weapons reductions”, it said in a separate press release. But now he adds that more emphasis should be placed on the current relationship between Washington and Tokyo, who are key allies.
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